Newyork Craigslist
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Communities Created Ad-hoc:
This world is a different place to live in with the emergence of relationships that are not formed on the basis of race or ethnicity. The Internet has almost dissolved the cultural barriers that have existed for centuries. The formation of online communities is an example of multiculturalism at its best. These communities are the result of the ages of Reason and Enlightenment which reiterated the notions of individuality and freedom. They also favored the celebration of the ordinary.
One of the most prolific results of such developments in the modern age is the advent of networks of various communities coming together at one place. Craigslist is one such urban community that caters to the simple needs of ordinary people living in various cities across the globe.
History: Founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark for the San Francisco Bay Area, it this group has expanded to serve 310 cities worldwide. It works with a staff of 22 people. Its unique source of income is to charge for ads in select cities, $25 for San Francisco bay Area, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Washington DC, and Seattle.
Features: The Home Page includes features like jobs, communities, housing, for sale, services, resumes, gigs, personals, and discussion forums, along with a list of all the US states and cities, Canadian provinces and cities, international cities and countries where it operates. In an interview with nPost.com, Craig spoke the community, We are a very simple site where people can address everyday needs such as finding a place to live, a job, selling their stuff, to finding a date. We are not about the fancy stuff, and instead focus on everyday life. Craigslist is rated the seventh most popular website in the world. It has about 4 billion page views every month.
Money Makers or Not: But for all this popularity, Craigslist has not made it big in terms of money. It made around $25 million last year, while other top ten Internet companies took home some billions of dollars. This has lead widespread speculation about why it does not make money in proportion with its potential. The current CEO of Craigslist, Jim Buckmaster, has something to tell the world about this. In an interview with the Opinion Journal of the Wall Street Journal, he said, In the big Internet boom, thousands of companies were set up. With the exception of us, pretty much all of them were set up with the primary objective being to make a lot of money. Almost all of those businesses went under and never made any money. Even businesses like Amazon still haven't made any money. They are still, over their entire lifetime, net negative. Here we are, we've been in the black since 1999--six or seven years. After a lot of debate about the financial aspects of the company, Craigslist decided to charge $10 for specific ads and $25 for all other ads in specific areas.Jim Buckmaster says that an Internet company cannot be run the same way as a steel company. Profitablity does not seem to be a major concern for the Craigslist leadership. Craigslist does not even feature ad banners on its website. The only time that it did so was to put up mock banners on April Fools Day simply to fool the viewers.
How to Use: The website is very simple with just listings in blue links. There is nothing majestic about the site. For most of the jobs it does not feature the name of the company. The job is simply assigned a code. If you are interested say in looking for jobs in writing in New York, you would simply have to select New York from the cities list on the right side of the page and click on Writing/Editing link at the bottom of the jobs column. You will be led to a page with the job titles and the date on which the job was posted. You select the job and you are taken to another page where the nature of the job is given. You send a mail to the ID that looks something like this: job-xxxxxxxxx@craigslist.org, where xxxxxxxxx is 9-digit job code. The concerned person from the company would respond to you. Simple enough!
The Controversies: While we talk about the popularity and simplicity of the site, there has been many a controversy about the community. In 2005, it got into trouble for refusing to remove the sale of Live8 tickets. Again in the same year, it was censured for promoting ads of dog breeders, hence, leading to irresponsible breeding and selling of pit bulls in the city of San Francisco. In 2006, it was criticized by San Francisco Bay Guardian for threatening to eviscerate the local newspapers. In 2006, it was sued by Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law for permitting the posting of discriminatory housing ads in Chicago.
In spite of arrests of various Craigslist users for posting questionable ads, especially with respect to forums like offering sexual favors, Craigslist refuses to let its site be policed because of its policy that the viewers should be given the right to red flag offensive posts. Craigslist has also been condemned by many websites for compromising its "Casual Encounters" forum in several cities.
The newspapers are so cross with this website that they must even consider it outrageous. While the print media makes money out of charging ads, Craigslist does not do so. This has lead to a move out of posting classifieds in the newspapers to this list. Hence the retaliation of premier local papers like San Francisco Bay Guardian and San Francisco Chronicle.
Craigslist Foundation: Leaving the controversies aside, the community started a non-profit organization called the Craigslist Foundation in 2001. It helps other non-profit organizations to establish themselves as well as to leverage their visibility.
But the nature of such debates is debatable because the print media went into a chaotic situation when television was introduced. Print feared that TV might replace it. But such fears have not come to pass. We should hope that the Craigslist and newspapers learn to coexist.
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